THE WORK-LIFE BALANCE
A growing belief that we are all over-worked has led for calls to quit the rat-race. Writers and researchers as varied as British pop-psychologist Oliver Sacks, US shorter-hours campaigner Juliet Schor (author of The Overworked American) and one-time conservative ideologue John Gray, can all be found bemoaning the treadmill of modern capitalism. The idea that the work-life balance should shift in favour of family and leisure is gaining ground - which is ironic, given the long-term trend to reduce working hours across Europe, including the 'overworked' UK. Even the US, where hours are longest in the developed world, has less of a work-ethic than seems to be the case. US studies show that employees spend as much as six hours at work on personal projects a week, from e-mailing to picking up kids (Cox and Alm, Myths of Rich and Poor, p. 67).
The latest issue of the London-based journal Cultural Trends provides important new material on the real calibrations of the work-life balance (Issue 43/44). James Woudhuysen's 'Play as the Main Event in International and UK Culture' analyses the growth of play in leisure, from theme parks to computer games. But Woudhuysen also looks at the increasing tendency for the motif of 'play' to colonise the world of work, where creativity and 'fun' become part of the employers' lexicon. Woudhuysen explains that the emphasis on play at work is symptomatic of an absence of real innovation in production.
'The economy of time' an overview by James Heartfield argues that the growing weight of leisure in the economy is a consequence of the more even distribution of working time with the expansion of those in work. Extensive, rather than intensive growth is characteristic of the last five years, meaning that working time is spread over more people. But capitalism's failure to engage the subjectivity of ordinary people through real creativity - in the realm of production - puts a far greater onus of engaging with people through culture.
Cultural Trends 43/44 is available from Carfax Publishing Ltd., Taylor and Francis Publishing Group, Rankine Road, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG24 8PR, and all good bookstores.
NORTHERN IRELAND'S 'STEAK KNIFE'
The British press named a Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci as the Secret Services informant in the Irish Republic Army in the eighties, further demoralizing a province where elections have been cancelled. Amongst republican critics of the peace process pursued by Sinn Fein the news that a senior member of the IRA, allegedly close to the Sinn Fein leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, and in charge of internal security was telling. For those who have always thought that negotiating with the British was a betrayal of the armed struggle, the idea that the new course was being directed by British intelligence is tempting. In particular, those dissident republicans who have been targeted by the IRA's own internal police have understandably grasped at the opportunity to challenge the authority of the so-called 'nutting squad'.
Infiltration is a problem for all anti-establishment movements. For the IRA, whose own clandestine organization was a response to repression, infiltration by British security was a grave danger. But personal betrayal and bribes are not the reason why the republican leadership surrendered to British rule. It was the absence of a winning strategy that led to republicanism's demoralization. The fact that the IRA turned from liberating Ireland to policing Irish men and women flows from the decision to call upon the British state to solve the conflict. Whether Scappaticci's naming is one more instance of black propaganda, or evidence of infiltration, the fact remains that republicanism has failed to provide a coherent alternative to British rule.
TERROR AND CONFUSION
Terror attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco have been taken to indicate that the war against Iraq was a distraction from the war against terror. Democrat leaders in the US are asking how Al Qaeda was allowed to re-group. Meanwhile Europeans are dying to say 'I told you so' - that military action in Iraq would provoke a reaction.
There is a relationship between the recent rise in terrorist attacks on western targets and Western policy towards the Middle East, but it is not a direct one of response. The growing demand in Western countries for direct intervention against presumed enemies in the Third World shakes up well-established relations with regional allies. The predilection of western leaders to demonstrate their moral convictions in other people's countries has tended to destabilize some traditional allies: the Suharto regime in Indonesia, General Musharraf in Pakistan, most pointedly, the Ba'athist regime in Iraq, and now Saudi Arabia (see 'House of Cards' http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DD9D.htm ). Unlovely as these authoritarian regimes were or are, by betraying their one-time allies, Western powers have left a vacuum of political authority that opens the way for terrorist organizations to flourish.
The characterization of the chaotic state of Iraq favoured in the European press is overstated. But seeing US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld fielding questions about the sewage system in Baghdad leaves you wondering how it was that this Republican administration got itself into 'nation-building' in the Middle East. Remembering that it was a favourite accusation of the incoming Bush team that the previous administration had over-reached itself setting up states in East Timor and Bosnia, seeing them assume responsibility for governing post-Saddam Iraq is remarkable. But overthrowing third world regimes is a quick-fix for shoring up domestic authority that in the end creates more disorder, and makes greater demands for Western intervention, whatever the intentions of policy-makers in Washington.
-- James Heartfield